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Carefully, you approach it.
Where once the cogitator had been surrounded on either side with shelves holding up Korash-22's finest collection of texts, now it was bare, the room cleared back to the wall to make way for his binagram. One of the lectors might have admonished you that the clearing of the Omnissiah's gifts was to forgo them, lessening his glory and failing to honor the machine, but in the face of such intricate devotion, you found yourself doubting his words. The image before you was intricate, and clearly a mark of esoteric knowledge beyond yours, which could be nothing but a sign of closeness to the machine itself.
And at the center of it, of course, was the data-lectern, Korash-22's private cogitator that you had seen him consulting on many occasions. You had never connected to it, of course, it's contents were noospherically distributed and isolated, as was Korash-22's right in his private study. Up close, what had once been covered by crimson cloth and surrounded by candles was laid bare, metal surfaces polished with a dark fluid that had an odd stench, sharp, rich and sickly sweet like blood, almost like what wafted out of Amos' kitchen, but you found yourself instinctively liking. Lights on the surface of the podium blinked softly with a muted green light, which itself served to drown out the golden light you had come to associate with noospheric conduit. Those were hidden behind the podium, carefully dimmed in preparation for this communion, no doubt.
Carefully, you kneeled before it, tucking the hem of your gown beneath your calves so they didn't bunch. For a moment, you let your eyes wander up, past the burnished bronze and mahogany of the cogitator's chassis to the data-lectern it was built into. Where would normally be a tome Korash-22 was consulting, the pages pinned open to a turn of phrase he found inspiring or poignant, there now rested the plate.
Of course, it was nothing new to you. Not by now. And yet, in the dim light, the amalgamation of brass and bronze shone brightly, shining after the attention of the reliquary. Across it's face, an intricate binary etching was carved, brass evaporated from it's surface by laser to reveal the richer bronze beneath, creating a complex carpet of binaric marks that seemed to form mountains and stars, newly polished so that the bronze beneath shone with a new luster that had been lost after many decades of slow tarnish. The Gothic etched across it in an organic, yet dignified scrawl seemed almost unnecessary, in comparison, though they were the only part of the markings you truly understood.
Clasped gently to the podium like this, it almost reminded you of how it had once looked- inside Corvus Lictor, before you had pulled it free of it's housing. Was this how it had once looked, when it was new, and Corvus Lictor was young?
